cardiac cats

Both Core and Official Metagames have top level subforums, official Tier Leaders, on-site analyses, and their suspect votes count towards the Tiering Contributor badge. The difference between both is that Core Metagames have Official Tournament representation, while Official Metagames aren't eligible for them for a given cycle. The list of Core Metagames is subject to change in very rare cases, but new metagames will be officialized without much issue as long as they meet the requirements listed below. The idea behind this is moving past the ambiguous "Officiality will not equate to obligatory representation in tournaments" policy and using a simpler system, which makes some decisions easier for the Tournament Director team and allows Smogon's Senior Staff to be more willing to officialize new metagames.

The following lists Core Metagames (which, again, are rarely subject to change):

To become an Official Metagame, a meta game must have the following (and been determined to have met the criteria by Senior Staff):

- Large and active playerbase on the simulator
- Base of workers willing to create content for the site regarding the metagame
- High activity on the forums
- Leaders interested in making the metagame as competitive as possible
- Must be playable on the cartridges without an external device